Mirrors of Love

Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38)

The Torah in Parshat Vayakhel, which describes the making of the Mishkan, goes out of its way to emphasize the role women played in it:

The men accompanied the women, and those who wanted to make a donation brought bracelets, earrings, finger rings, and body ornaments, all made of gold. (Ex. 35:22)

Every skilled woman put her hand to spinning, and they [all] brought the spun yarn of sky-blue wool, dark red wool, crimson wool and fine linen. Highly skilled women volunteers also spun the goats' wool. (35:25-26). Every man and woman among the Israelites who felt an urge to give something for all the work that God had ordered through Moses, brought a donation for God. (Ex. 35:29)

Indeed the emphasis is even greater than it seems in translation, because of the unusual locution in verse 22, Vayavo-u ha-anashim al hanashim, which implies that the women came to make their donations first, and the men merely followed their lead (Ibn Ezra, Ramban, Rabbenu Bachye).

This is all the more striking since the Torah implies that the women refused to contribute to the making of the Golden Calf (see the commentaries to Ex. 32:2). The women had a sense of judgment in the religious life - what is true worship, and what false - that the men lacked.

Kli Yakar (R. Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, 1550 -1619) makes the further point that since the Tabernacle was an atonement for the Golden Calf, the women had no need to contribute at all, since it was the men not the women who needed atonement. None the less, women gave, and did so before the men.

Most moving, though, by far is the cryptic verse:

He [Betzalel] made the copper washstand and its copper base out of the mirrors of the dedicated women [ha-tzove'ot] who congregated at the entrance of the Communion Tent. (Ex. 38:8)

The sages (in Midrash Tanhuma) told a story about this. This is how Rashi tells it:

Israelite women owned mirrors, which they would look into when they adorned themselves. Even these [mirrors] they did not hold back from bringing as a contribution toward the Mishkan, but Moses rejected them because they were made for temptation [i.e., to inspire lustful thoughts]. The Holy One, blessed is He, said to him, "Accept [them], for these are more precious to Me than anything because through them the women set up many legions [i.e., through the children they gave birth to] in Egypt." When their husbands were weary from back-breaking labour, they [the women] would go and bring them food and drink and give them to eat. Then they [the women] would take the mirrors and each one would see herself with her husband in the mirror, and she would seduce him with words, saying, "I am more beautiful than you." And in this way they aroused their husbands' desire and would be intimate with them, conceiving and giving birth there, as it is said: "Under the apple tree I aroused you" (Song 8:5). This is [the meaning of] what is bemar'ot hatzove'ot [lit., the mirrors of those who set up legions]. From these [the mirrors], the washstand was made.

The story is this. The Egyptians sought not merely to enslave, but also to put an end to, the people of Israel. One way of doing so was to kill all male children. Another was simply to interrupt normal family life. The people, both men and women, were labouring all day. At night, says the Midrash, they were forbidden to return home. They slept where they worked. The intention was to destroy both privacy and sexual desire, so that the Israelites would have no more children.

The women realised this, and decided to frustrate Pharaoh's plan. They used mirrors to make themselves attractive to their husbands. The result was that intimate relations resumed. The women conceived and had children (the "legions" referred to in the word tzove'ot). Only because of this was there a new generation of Jewish children. The women, by their faith, courage and ingenuity, secured Jewish survival.

The Midrash continues that when Moses commanded the Israelites to bring offerings to make the tabernacle, some brought gold, some silver, some bronze, some jewels. But many of the women had nothing of value to contribute except the mirrors they had brought with them from Egypt. These they brought to Moses, who recoiled in disgust. What, he thought, have these cheap objects, used by women to make themselves look attractive, to do with the sanctuary and the sacred? God rebuked Moses for daring to think this way, and ordered him to accept them.

The story is powerful in itself. It tells us, as do so many other midrashim, that without the faith of women, Jews and Judaism would never have survived. But it also tells us something absolutely fundamental to the Jewish understanding of love in the religious life.

In his impressive recent book Love: A History (2011) the philosopher Simon May writes: "If love in the Western world has a founding text, that text is Hebrew." Judaism sees love as supremely physical and spiritual. That is the meaning of "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might" (Deut. 6:5). This is not the language of meditation or contemplation, philosophical or mystical. It is the language of passion.

Even the normally cerebral Maimonides writes this about the love of God:

What is the love of God that is befitting? It is to love God with a great and exceeding love, so strong that one's soul shall be knit up with the love of God, such that it is continually enraptured by it, like a lovesick individual whose mind is never free from passion for a particular woman and is enraptured by her at all times … Even intenser should be the love of God in the hearts of those who love Him. They should be enraptured by this love at all times. (Laws of Repentance, 10:5)

This is the love we find in passages like Psalm 63:2, "My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." Only because the sages thought about love this way, did they take it for granted that The Song of Songs - an extremely sensual series of love poems - was about the love between God and Israel. Rabbi Akiva called it "the holy of holies" of religious poetry.

It was Christianity, under the influence of classical Greece, that drew a distinction between eros (love as intense physical desire) and agape (a calm, detached love of humanity-in-general and things-in-general) and declared the second, not the first, to be religious. It was this self-same Greek influence that led Christianity to read the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit as a story of sinful sexual desire - an interpretation that should have no place whatsoever in Judaism.

Simon May speaks about the love of God in Judaism as being characterised by "intense devotion; absolute trust; fear of his power and presence; and rapturous, if often questioning, absorption in his will ... Its moods are a combination of the piety of a vassal, the intimacy of friends, the fidelity of spouses, the dependence of a child, the passion of lovers ..." He later adds, "The widespread belief that the Hebrew Bible is all about vengeance and 'an eye for an eye,' while the Gospels supposedly invent love as an unconditional and universal value, must therefore count as one of the most extraordinary misunderstandings in all of Western history."

The Midrash dramatises this contrast between eros and agape as an argument between God and Moses. Moses believes that closeness to God is about celibacy and purity. God teaches him otherwise, that passionate love, when offered as a gift to God, is the most precious love of all. This is the love we read about in Shir ha-Shirim. It is the love we hear in Yedid Nefesh,(1) the daring song we sing at the beginning and toward the end of Shabbat. When the women offered God the mirrors through which they aroused their husbands' love in the dark days of Egypt, God told Moses, "These are more precious to Me than anything else." The women understood, better than the men, what it means to love God "with all your heart and all your soul and all your might."

NOTE

1. Yedid nefesh is usually attributed to Rabbi Elazar ben Moshe Azikri (1533-1600). However Stefan Reif (The Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Libraries, 1997, p. 93) refers to an earlier appearance of the song in a manuscript by Samuel ben David ben Solomon, dated circa 1438.

Thank you Rabbi Sacks for sharing the wisdom that the Almighty gives you. You are so diligent and dedicated in studying Torah to help others to understand G-d's instruction so eloquently! The first commandment tells us tha we must LOVE G-d above ALL else with all that we are - If we follow this instruction, then we can love our fellowman as ourselves, and we would NOT TRESPASS the other eight commandments! If we love others, then we bless them helping them and praising them

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Yehudith Shraga,
March 3, 2013 7:46 PM

There is LOVE and love

According to Kabbalah both eros and agape kinds of love are egoistic ones,and have nothing to do with the love Torah speaks about.Eros and agape kinds of love may be experienced by nearly and all the people in different periods of time or in different conditions. Spiritual meaning of love is the pure bestowing or unconditional love(Baal HaSulam explaines four stages of the development of spiritual love in his Introduction to Talmud Esser Seffirot)and it is THE LOVE we have no idea about,THE LOVE we may not imagine or expereince JUST because we wish to.The concept of "Love" is one of the deepest ones from the point of Gematria which is the same with the gematria of One(13)and these two words make the Gematria 26,which is the most hidden name of the Creator.Torah DOES speak about this kind of LOVE,but it is beyond human ability to discribe it,as well as it is beyond our imagination to even think about unconditional Love,and it concerns both the eros and agape kinds of love,experiencing them for the sake of bestowing is qualitatively different experience from our corporial egoistic one,and it demands a total correction of a person.We are born with different levels of ability,BUT nobody's born with the ability to love unconditionally,it's exactly what we're coming to this world for and what we're learning here and what our final exam will be about,we neither know to love ourselves nor other,we have no idea what it means to love and mothers love to their children is as egoistic as all the rest of the corporial"loves".The women,the article speaks about,are the example of the ability to overcome corporial love in favour of bestowing spiritual one and that's why their gift is so precious for the Creator.It's not that the Creator needs anything from us,BUT it's HIS The Only Plaesure to see us recieving the eternal values at the cost of overcoming the egoistic ones.As the Sages teach us, when we say "We love fish" it means that "We love eating it" as for the fish, who cares?

(5)
Lettie vanColler,
March 15, 2012 8:01 PM

This was so insightful and refreshing to read! It excellently explains the difference between Eros and Agape love.

(4)
Anonymous,
March 14, 2012 6:52 PM

Beautiful but perhaps incomplete with regard to the womens' offering

The discussion is a beautiful and important understanding of the intertwined and underappreciated issues of women's service and the role of human love.
Yet, I have to wonder if the service of the Israelite women is fully appreciated. How did the women become skilled in spinning and weaving? It could only be that those were their slave duties. Thus, the women not only donated their mirrors, but also they, voluntarily, resumed performance of their old slave duties, though this time in service of Hashem. This is as if the men needed to volunteer to make bricks for the Mishkan. We can learn much from this about the love and devotion of the Israelite women and their tremendous toughness.

(3)
Leah,
March 13, 2012 8:29 PM

Why converts come to Juadism

I live in a small town in the middle of the U.S. We are constantly getting people coming to our Rabbi to convert. Once they are accepted, after having been turned away several times, they study diligently. I have always asked myself why anyone would convert. Since we believe the good people of all faiths will convert, we don't encourage it. But maybe this concept of love that Rabbi Sachs explained so eloquently is apparent to them. My only other recent British source of why anyone wants to be Jewish is the novel by acclaimed British author, Howard Jacobson, "The Finkler Question." Although it is humorous, there is much in the book that is quite serious about love and it's meaning to Jews and non-Jews (and the neurotic types in both religions.

(2)
Wassim,
March 13, 2012 12:20 PM

My take on love (ie. just my opinion)

I don't associate Eros with love at all. Agape yes, but Eros is a temporary illusion in my opinion.
I've been thinking lately that love is not a feeling you receive - it's an effort you give.
I often imagine that *some* love songs are better understood in the context of love between human and God rather than between man and woman. Some examples are Van Morrison's "have I told you lately that I love you", Whitney Houston's "Greatest love of all", and Rod Stewart's "sailing".
I imagine love as a triangle with man and woman at opposite ends of the base, and God as the apex.
I also think that the faith in Jewish women shouldn't be assumed to exist in all women. Jewish women have been conditioned through Jewish history (a lot of suffering and lessons learnt) whereas some other cultures' understanding of faith is not up to the same standard. I'm not making any blanket assessments on women. I prefer a case by case analysis, and not to be misled by romantic interpretations of love although some romance is normal from time to time (but that's not what sustains a marriage, family, community, nation or civilisation - in my opinion).
Also, I understand the "mirrors of love" concept differently. I believe both men and women are motivated by their basic "ascent to power" instinct. In a family context, the man and woman are subconsciously (sometimes overtly) competing with each other to demonstrate who is the superior giver/carer and therefore more worthy of the throne in the family. It's the classic "battle of the sexes" theme. I believe the key is to find balance between male and female dominance (and perhaps let God sit on that throne). I also believe this can only be achieved by appreciating the differences while allowing for some commonality, rather than importing purely legalistic notions of "equality" into the family context.
Love women, but don't let them walk all over you either.

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Michal,
March 12, 2012 10:32 PM

Loving God

I am glad, that love is so important in Judaism. Love between husband and wife as well as loving Hashem.
What a wonderful prayer is the Shema. There we are asked to love God "with all our heart, all our soul and with everything that belongs to us". Love is the most beautiful kind of relationship there is on this earth. May we all grow in this love. -
For a woman a mirror is very dear. For Hashems Holy Temple the woman who left Egypt, brought it to Mose, their Leader and ment with it: "For You, Our God, we give what is important and dear to us.
And unlike Mose, Hashem smiled at them.